12 Awesome PowerPoint Techniques for Better Presentations

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PowerPoint is an essential tool for all types of communication, but it’s almost universally used poorly. Revolutionize your content with amazing visuals, engage your audience with compelling animations, and impress them with beautiful, professional designs—all using only PowerPoint.

In this session, you’ll see a host of visual storytelling techniques, all demonstrated live, that you can use immediately to create amazing presentations or interactive content. You’ll see how to apply these to marketing content, sales conversations, and exec keynotes, plus get free sources for graphics and productivity boosting tools.

You’ll learn how to:

  • Create dynamic visuals that support persuasive stories to engage your audience
  • Develop professional looking designs for presentations and other content
  • Become a PowerPoint legend with techniques to make effective presentations quickly and easily

Advanced Interactivity in PowerPoint

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Most boring PowerPoint presentations are linear: just one slide after another. Learn how to break out of the mold and create a stunning, non-linear, interactive experience with PowerPoint! In this session, Chris Converse will show you strategies for creating a global navigation structure and an interactive table of contents that will dramatically help you navigate larger presentations.

Topics include:

  • How to interact with slides during a presentation
  • How to play a sequence of slides (Slide Zoom) from any point within your presentation

Word Craft

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You may not have “copywriter” in your job title, but that doesn’t mean you can’t craft your words more effectively. Sharpen some fundamentals, and you’ll be able to put them to good use—whether you’re captioning social media posts, writing emails and landing pages, or building compelling marketing messages.

In this session, you’ll discover how to:

  • Speak to the most important person of all: your reader
  • Use the magic power of… honesty
  • Streamline and turbocharge your text
  • Unflubbify your writing

InDesign Secrets—LIVE!

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If you’re an InDesign Secrets podcast fan (or even if you’re not!) you don’t want to miss this rare live-audience recording with InDesign gurus David Blatner and Anne-Marie Concepción! Laughs and learning go hand-in-hand as these two teachers explore the intricate workings of our favorite page-layout program.

  • Winner of the “most annoying feature” contest
  • Interviews with the stars
  • Little-used InDesign features that you really should be using
  • A special Obscure Feature of the Week-eek-eek!

Making it Fun: Lessons from a Career in Creativity

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Join Michael Flarup for an inspiring journey through the highs and lows of a career in creativity. Drawing on more than two decades as a designer, iconist, author, and game developer, Michael reveals how playful exploration, intentional work, and an unyielding pursuit of joy can help you find success and creative fulfillment. You’ll learn how to tap into your passions and embrace experimentation while learning from mistakes. Sharing candid stories along with practical strategies, Michael will have you rethinking what it means to be “successful” while helping you focus on what truly matters: having fun while making meaningful work.

Don’t miss this opportunity to:

  • Discover how to use your passions to fuel a fulfilling career
  • Learn the secret weapon that will make you be able to take on any project
  • Embrace the unexpected and find joy in the iterative, imperfect process of creation
  • Walk away with actionable ideas to reignite your curiosity and stay motivated

Three Minutes Max: PowerPoint

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This crowd favorite is back and better than ever! Don’t miss this fun-filled, action-packed, highly educational, and mind-blowing session where each of our instructors will have just three minutes to share their favorite PowerPoint tip—then you get to vote for your favorite!

In past years, some of the best tips have been held for this session, so you don’t want to miss it!

Effective Visual Communication Using PowerPoint

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Few people enjoy creating, delivering, or even watching PowerPoint presentations… and yet everyone is forced into doing these things sooner or later. Even worse, some presentations are too wordy, text-based, and generally dull. They don’t tell stories that engage, excite, or inspire; and they do little to actually help people learn.

This session addresses these needs, by giving you techniques and frameworks for creating more compelling, clear, and persuasive presentations by incorporating storytelling, visualization, and some PowerPoint skills to create and deliver more impactful presentations.

You’ll learn how to:

  • Craft persuasive audience-focused messages that cater to diverse needs and requirements
  • Incorporate visual storytelling to engage audiences and ensure they understand and follow-through
  • Use PowerPoint as a tool to meaningfully enhance your communication and make it successful

Designing for Print

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Far from being dead, print is a tactile, immersive medium that demands a different approach than screen design. Chris Carls walks you through the key principles, tools, and techniques for elevating your designs of everything from brochures and business cards to large-format posters and packaging.

We’ll cover everything from color theory and resolution to prepress preparation, and you’ll learn how to avoid common pitfalls—such as like color shifts or poor-quality images—that can ruin an otherwise great design. You’ll also learn tips for working efficiently with print vendors, understanding file types, and using industry-standard tools to get the most out of your design software.

Topics include:

  • Understand color modes and color profiles for accurate print output
  • Learn the critical difference between RGB vs. CMYK and how to work in each for the best results
  • Set up your files properly for bleed, trim, and safe areas to avoid costly mistakes
  • Gain insight into working with typefaces and images to ensure they print at their best
  • Learn to communicate with your print vendors and ensure your designs are translated perfectly to paper

Animating Static Images

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Motion and animation are incredibly important in digital design, and yet the vast majority of our designs and images are usually static. Join us in this fascinating look at how to bring your images and designs to life.

Topics include:

  • Learn techniques to add animation to static photographs and illustrations
  • Add video and animations to photos in Photoshop
  • Manipulate artwork in After Effects using displacement maps, patterns, and fractals
  • Learn to combine multiple effects to create realistic, animated effects to images without the use of video

Automating Your Layouts

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While humans will always have a part in designing and creating, we too often forget why we use computers in the first place: because they’re good at doing things that we’re not so good at, including automating mind-numbing tasks! This is your chance to uncover the secrets of the InDesign power users and learn how to take advantage of powerful tools that can save you time and make you more productive.

Topics include:

  • How to make hundreds of publications per year with a small team
  • Progressing from manual to keyboard shortcuts to GREP to scripts
  • Incorporating Multi-Find/Change
  • Powerful custom script automation to take it to the next level